


Say It

by bandaran



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Aggressively Adorable Wolf Princess, Alpha Derek, Angst with a Happy Ending, Cursed Derek, Familiars, M/M, Mutual Pining, Original Pack, Puppies, Reincarnation, Witches
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-01
Updated: 2018-04-01
Packaged: 2019-04-16 19:02:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,412
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14171460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bandaran/pseuds/bandaran
Summary: Prompt #14 for Sterek Glompfest - Derek and the rest of the pack are cursed and turned into puppies.Stiles finds the whole pack transformed inexplicably into puppers. A lot has gone unsaid over the years and now that Derek can't say a word, Stiles realizes how much he could lose.





	Say It

The Hale Vault is a spooky place even to Stiles, and he’s seen some spooky shit over the years. The fact that it’s under the high school sticks out in his mind the most if only because the fact of it eludes to just how old, how prominent, the Hale family was. He may have done some digging in his off hours about them for… personal reasons. They were among the first settlers to populate Beacon Valley, and though Beacon Hills takes its namesake from the Nemeton, it also seemed to coincide with the name of the old Hale estate back in the day. And before moving west, the Hales had been in the Americas since basically the beginning. It’s not hard to see why; Stiles is fairly certain more than half of the immigrants in the early days were descendants of one supernatural branch or another.

For all his effort, the public record requests and ancestry tree websites and forums, he is painfully aware that he should have just gone to the source for information, except Derek Hale isn’t exactly a _sharer_. They may be a pack, but the only ones he’s ever really said much in regards to his family are Isaac and Boyd. Probably for good reason. In addition to not being a sharer, Derek is also not a _trust-er_. After a while, Stiles convinced himself he was compiling all of this information in case Derek ever came looking for it. It seemed a righteous cause until he found himself standing in the middle of the subterranean Vault floor. All that he had found was suddenly crumbs under a banquet table.

The Hales threw nothing away. Centuries of history and artifacts line the walls and tables all coated in an inch of dust and looking lonely. This must have been what Benjamin Gates felt like standing in the treasure room of the Templar hoard. So much history left to rot under a place of learning; irony seemed to run in torrents through the Hale line. At some point, someone in the family must have tried cataloging all of it because Stiles comes upon a desk tucked into one corner – or shoved to make room, judging by the scuffs in the concrete – full of ledgers outlining a fairly basic indexing system. Most of the items it lists still look to be in their places. Like the aisle marked ‘skulls’, which does not disappoint. There is even a subsection for ‘skull fragments’ that include a tagged bone chip denoting the previous owner and details of her gruesome death at the hands of Aloysius Wyatt Hale.

Stiles replaces the bit of skull on its shelf and peers over his shoulder in search of Derek, but he and Scott have disappeared somewhere into the depths of the Vault. They may or may not have left him with the explicit order that he touch nothing. But, c’mon, Derek knew it was an act of futility commanding Stiles to do anything. He may as well have begged Stiles to root through every inch of the place. He trots back to the desk for a new location to explore and obviously when he thumbs across a section marked ‘arcane spellcraft’ he’s gotta check that out. He is but a _man_.

Tomes dominate the aisle and as soon as he steps into it, the energy pouring off them makes his hands go clammy. None of them appear to be made of standard binding. He really hopes it’s leather stretched over the bulk of the covers, the cow or pig kind and not the human kind. One juts out from the rest, covered in spines and pebbled with black scales. The tag hanging from the book has only one ominous word scribbled on it: TERMINUS.

So, Stiles backs away from that one. He’s a curious little scamp, but not that fucking curious. As his gaze lopes over the rest of the collection, various crystal phials and herbs, scrolls and pickled organs in jars, his eye catches on a piece that he’s not sure had been there when he first walked into the aisle. All the way at the back against the far wall is a glass dome with a golden feather suspended in the air beneath it. A soft glow radiates out from it adding a warmer light to the space than that of the hanging incandescent bulbs. When he concentrates he can hear it… singing. Not a gentle warbling song, but something more triumphant, like clarion trumpeters heralding battle. It grows clearer when he closes his eyes; it’s beating in his ears and he swears he can smell early morning grass, musky war horses tramping and snorting.

He’s abruptly jolted from the experience – the trance? – when someone grabs his arm, cutting off all of the sensory information flooding his brain as if he had thrown off a breaker. He blinks rapidly, heart slamming, but he’s still in the aisle, Derek looming over him and looking ultra pissed _._

“I told you not to touch anything,” huffs Derek, brow furrowed a little deeper than usual. Stiles catches a glimpse of his own hand, still poised to reach out and run his fingers over the glass dome, but for the life of him, he can’t remember moving any closer to it. His skin starts to crawl and it takes an insurmountable amount of willpower not to step closer to Derek to get away from it.

Swallowing down his panic, he snaps out, “This place is _fucking nuts_.” It’s meant to be aloof, silly, a _Stiles_ sort of thing to say, but comes out spooked and uneven.

Derek’s eyes graze over him, and then the feather encased in glass and he releases Stiles’s wrist.

“Let’s go.”

“You done being all broody and mysterious?” Stiles asks as brightly as he can, but it’s clear Derek isn’t convinced by his tone. It feels a little like the times Stiles had done something stupid as a kid, like throw eggs at the hornet’s nest in his dad’s shed. John might have punished him properly if he hadn’t seen how absolutely terrified Stiles was. Derek says nothing, but the warning is in the plains of his face, tight and disappointed. Stiles follows him out of the aisle and in his haste kicks over a jar on one of the lowest shelves. The shattering ceramic is ear-splitting, the only sound in what is otherwise a vacuum. It stops Derek short, brings his head to the side and Stiles’s guts drop out through his feet.

“Shit,” Stiles blurts, kneeling to grab the shards? Sweep them up with the broom he doesn’t have? He doesn’t really know what to do once he’s hovering over them and just sort of sits there fretting, hands moving erratically.

“Leave it,” Derek sighs, and keeps walking.

Because Derek’s right and cutting his hands up will only make this worse, so Stiles stands in defeat and trudges on after his wolf. Or… Derek, not like _his_ Derek. Just Derek.

 

When Stiles pushes Scott about what they had been doing in the Vault at all, his best friend for perhaps the first time in his life, is an impenetrable fortress.

“I can’t tell you, dude,” Scott says around a mouthful of bacon cheeseburger, “You weren’t even supposed to be there.”

“This is _so_ unfair,” Stiles barks, “Is this like a regular thing? You guys sneaking around all,” he waves his hand vaguely, “sneakily?”

“No, it’s not like that. Derek’s just a private dude. He asked for my help, that’s it. How did you even find out about it?”

“I have my ways, _Scott_.”

“Deaton told you?”

“That’s still a ‘way’.”

“Whatever, just drop it. I promised I wouldn’t say anything. Just like I promised I wouldn’t tell anyone about when you shit your pants at lacrosse camp.”

Aghast, Stiles whisper-shouts, leaning across the table, “ _That is different._ Unless Derek literally brought you down there to shit his pants _in front of you_ it is unequivocally _different._ ”

Scott levels him with a flat stare, one he must have picked up from Derek himself. Except Scott’s just cute as fuck with those wide puppy dog eyes and it doesn’t even come close to the murderiness of their alpha’s glare.

 

Stiles doesn’t sleep much that night. He finishes a bunch of modules for his online courses at Beacon Hills Community College, essentially wrapping up a semester’s worth of work in one horrible, Adderall fueled evening. It’s not like he is incapable of respecting people’s boundaries. It’s a whole other butt load of stuff. Things are different than they were when they were in high school and he had known there would be changes. Everyone said there would be; his dad, his guidance counselors, Melissa, Deaton, but knowing a thing is coming and actually experiencing it are two very different enchiladas. Most of his friends are gone to school out of state, including Lydia, and the pack seems to be closing in on itself. He’s the only human, or at least, the only one without heightened _everything_. There are just some things he isn’t a part of now. This visit to the Vault was yet another in an ongoing list of shittiness he isn’t included in and it sucks.

And there’s nothing he can do about it without running to Derek to whine about being the odd man out. He has enough dignity not to stoop to that.

Not yet, anyway.

 

He wakes up at his desk, a cup of decaf coffee steaming by his elbow and note from his dad saying he’s sorry they missed each other and that he’ll have to work late again tonight. Figures. He decides to shower and head over to the bagel shop downtown for some breakfast. On his way out the door, he shoots a text over to Scott inviting him along. By the time he rolls up the McCall driveway, Jeep coughing, and sputtering smelly exhaust, he still hasn’t gotten a reply. He hops out and bangs on the door.

He keeps knocking until a frazzled Melissa throws it open looking ready to strangle someone. When she sees it’s him she runs a hand through her curls tiredly and asks, “What is it Stiles?”

“Mama McCall!” he chirps.

“It’s six in the morning.”

“Yeah, sorry, I was gonna pick up Scott for breakfast, is he awake?”

“He spent the night at Derek’s,” she answers with a yawn. Her words put a stone in Stiles’s gut, but he keeps grinning despite himself.

“Oh, ok, I’ll, uh, head over there.”

“Stiles,” she says before he can step off the porch, “You’d tell me if my son was dating anyone, wouldn’t you?”

“Sure,” he answers, feeling ridiculous and uncertain of himself and tries his hardest to shove it down.

“He’s just been spending a lot of time with Derek lately,” she says, “and, nothing against him, but Derek’s just… you know, a lot. I’d like to know is all.”

“Yeah, uh, I don’t think he’s seeing anyone.”

“Ok, well have fun and tell Scott to text me.”

“I will.”

Stiles climbs back into his Jeep while actively keeping his thoughts to a dull roar. The local Top 40 radio station helps a little.

 

With his head pressed against one of the wall panels of the elevator, Stiles jams the button for the top floor. The lift starts its ascension and he is awash with stupid fucking thoughts. Bopping his forehead against the metal a few times brings down his own rising – he doesn’t even know what. Dread? But what’s he got to dread exactly? His best friend sneaking around with… with a mutual acquaintance? It’s none of his business and if Scott wanted to talk to him about it than he would have. They’re sort-of-adults and adults deal with things on their own terms. Like adults.

The doors grind open on the loft. The massive bay windows cast vibrant pink and gold beams of morning light across the common space. It’s empty to Stiles’s sudden and immense relief. He could just leave. He should leave actually, yeah, fuck; he doesn’t know what he’s walking in to. Probably nothing. But if it’s not nothing and is _something_ he should get the hell out of there and spare himself some remorse. Heart throbbing and palms sweating, totally set on getting breakfast alone to eat his feelings in sullen silence, he goes to push the button for the lobby when a snuffling sound stops him.

There’s a blanket balled up on the couch, the same knit blanket he had painstakingly picked out on Etsy as a housewarming gift after Derek had the place remodeled. He stares at it a moment, certain he heard the noise somewhere in that vicinity. The blanket moves then, wobbling strangely as if there’s –

Stiles pads over to the couch frowning and hears the sound again, light chuffing or… whimpering? He throws the blanket over the back of the couch quickly, Band-Aid ripping style, leaving a mystified chestnut colored puppy in its wake. Stiles lets out a bubble of laughter, relieved that for once the mystery thing in the apartment is an adorable puppy and not a floating disembodied head or killer gnome or whatever. The puppy spins in circles, yipping and shaking with happy-puppy-energy. It paws at Stiles, begging to be picked up and when he does scoop it off the couch he’s rewarded with nips of kisses and squirming.

“Oh my god Derek when did you get a dog?!” he calls out, forgetting momentarily the trepidation he’d been sheeted in a moment ago. There’s no answer.

“Why aren’t you sleeping with your dad?” Stiles asks Puppy. Puppy licks his chin, nose, mouth; too excited to decide on the best part of his face for lickies. “Derek Hale is a cruel, cruel man for leaving you here,” Stiles coos and then louder he yells, “I know you can hear me, Sourwolf! We need to have a serious conversation about responsibility!”

When he had tossed over the blanket, Puppy was not the only thing unearthed; shoved into the cushions are a pair of boxers that make his face swell up with heat and his stomach empty out into a pit. And then a spreading warmth saturates his hoody, snapping him back into his body, and Stiles sighs and holds Puppy out from him. “Did you seriously just whiz on me?” 

He puts the puppy down long enough to doff his hoody. While they wait for Alpha Hale to make himself pretty – perfectly quaffed hair and beard-scaping must eat up at least an hour of his morning – Stiles plays with Puppy on the floor. It helps distract him from, from everything else. He should have just left, but he’s a glutton for punishment, apparently, and drunk on puppy-love.

“Where are your toys?” Stiles asks aloud because his hands and knees are starting to take a beating wrestling with the wee doggo. He sits up for a break, absently scratching the puppy’s head. “No collar either? Do you even have a name or does he just call you ‘Dog’?”

They wait for forty-five minutes, Stiles should know because he’s been checking his phone every five minutes and it’s doing nothing to abate his slowly budding anxiety. He checks the closet after a while, but Derek’s gym bag and sneakers are still neatly tucked away. He grits his teeth and climbs the stairs with Puppy propped under one arm. He’s never been in Derek’s room before. It’s too holy. Or something. It’s not that he’s ever been expressly told not to go in, he just… hasn’t. The other bedroom doors line up down the hall, all undisturbed save for an occasional scritch, scritch, scritch that Stiles chalks up to the age of the building.

He braces himself and knocks.

No answer.

“C’mon man, your dog needs attention, have ever even petted it?”

Judging by the whining and general hype of the little pupper, the answer is likely ‘no’. This also fails to merit a response. He keeps knocking and Derek keeps not answering him until he sighs, “Fuck it,” and throws open the door. The room is moderately sized and really just for sleeping. There’s nothing personal on the walls or dresser and the bed is a bland square of white linens. An _empty,_ bland square.

“Derek?” Stiles asks, a creeping feeling easing its way under his skin. The sheets are all churned up and… there are sweatpants balled up under the covers. As if he decided to run a naked gauntlet in the middle of the night. “What the hell?” Stiles asks the puppy cradled in his arms. He takes a few steps into the space and a smell that is all Derek fills his nose. Maybe that’s a creepy thing to notice, but it’s true. Derek only ever smells like citrus-y soap and sweat to Stiles, but it’s a specific sort of smell, one that doesn’t smell the same on anyone else. Without him in it, the room is a phantom limb, just a whisper of the real thing.

Stiles sets the puppy down in order to have a proper look around. Maybe if he can find Derek’s phone he can figure out what’s going on? His Camaro was in the garage when Stiles parked, so he can’t have gone far.

Or, he absolutely could have, he’s a wolf after all.

Puppy immediately scampers to the bed, yipping, his tail slapping back and forth _._ He’s halfway lodged under the frame when Stiles gets to him, his fat belly prohibiting him from going any further.

“No! Puppy you’re gonna break your neck! Jesus!” Stiles cries, dragging him back out.

Once he gets Puppy out of the way he peers under the bed and is met with tiny growl too small to be threatening. Two glowing, scarlet eyes light up in the cramped underbelly of the mattress.

“You’ve _got_ to be joking.”

Puppy bark, barks at him, trying to get passed his arm in order to wedge himself back under the bed.

“Derek,” Stiles says as steadily as he possibly can, “Tell me you’re not a puppy right now.”

 

Derek Hale is a puppy right now.

 

Behind the other bedroom doors, pawing at the frames to be let out are three more puppies. Not puppies, exactly, _wolf cubs_. Stiles is sitting on the couch, head in his hands while the four of them romp around the room playfighting and barking and knocking into furniture. What the actual fuck is he supposed to do about this? He best friend, his pack, his alpha, all of the major guiding forces in his life are goddamn tiny fluff balls that don’t seem to be aware anything is amiss. Except for Derek who is still currently hiding under his bed, too freaked out to move or do anything useful other than snarl.

Stiles is so fucked.

This has got to be a werewolf thing, right? Like maybe there was some sort of super, blue, blood moon or something that turned them all. But if that’s the case, why won’t they turn back? They don’t seem to understand him any better than regular puppies would. And, weirdly enough, Stiles is really putting in a ton of effort not to cry. Like, he’s seen way worse than this. He’s gotten the crap kicked out of him more times than he can count and has the scars to prove it. Maybe the difference is that his pack had always been there to clean him up, to commiserate, to help him figure out what to do next.

He cannot go to pieces right now. They wouldn’t. Even Isaac would come up with _something_ on his own. Stiles swallows hard, forces himself to breathe and dial’s Alan Deaton’s number.

 

***

It was an extraordinarily bad day to come sweeping into the Preserve and Scott had told him repeatedly not to; not just him, but the whole pack.

Except Stiles couldn't do it. He couldn't leave it alone.

He'd known exactly the importance, the hurt, of this day and just ignoring it like the pack thought they should wasn't right. So, he'd cooked up some flimsy excuse to be there - really fucking flimsy – his Jeep rumbling up the long winding drive to the burnt-out tinderbox of Hale House. Despite the shattered shell of a structure waiting for him at the end of the dirt road, the day was inviting in a way it shouldn’t have been. Sun beaten, exposed beams, black with char, rose out of the ground at the top of the hill. The walls looked to be expanding in the summer heat; humidity having blown out the broken siding and window frames where they were visible under an inset of ivy vines.

What with the forest's slow reclamation of the property, all the green and flowers overtaking the burns and holes, the place almost looked like just another old house downtown in the historic district. The brightness and the erosion put a sour slosh in Stiles' belly as he stepped from the Jeep. He gave the house another weary glance and reached back in, across to the passenger's seat and grabbed the leather-bound book waiting there. The book radiated heat from the long drive under the magnified glare of sun through the windshield.

It fitted warmly under his arm as he walked the final grade up to the scorched-out porch. He'd known Derek heard him coming; he'd probably heard the Jeep's wheezing a mile off, but he wasn't anywhere in sight. Not that Stiles expected any sort of fond welcome. The house was cooler. The musky air dabbed at Stiles' temples and skated coldly down his damp spine. The Jeep's air conditioning was on the fritz in the sense that it had never actually chugged out anything other than stale, hot air.

Stiles sucked in a breath and called into the gloom, "Hey Derek?" He tried his best to sound sunny. He didn't get an answer and huffed. Planks creaked under his feet as he moved room to room on the lower level, but each yielded the same result. A big steamy pile of nothing. He circled back to the wide staircase that dominated the entryway and nearly jumped right out of his fucking skin at Derek's appearance seated halfway up the incline.

His forearms took all of the weight of his shoulders, balancing on his knees. There may as well have been fifty pounds of rocks on his back by the look of his bent posture. Stiles was surprised not to find a blazing scowl on his mouth. He was neutral, tired really, but not exactly angry to find Stiles trespassing. He was staring, though, staring a thousand yards and that little patch of familiar behavior gave Stiles slightly more confidence over his decision to come here.

"Heya, big guy," Stiles chirped nervously and continued to get stared at with hollow eyes. He swallowed, scratched at the back of his neck, "So, I was reading this thing," he brandished the book, "about lunar cycles and the effects on wolves and it says you all get weaker during the New Moon but didn't really say whether or not there was a way to fortify yourself against it. Like, if we wait for the New Moon, and then like pump you and Scott and everyone up with some magical steroids, you could totally take on the Alpha Pack no problem, right?"

"Why are you here." Derek asked blankly after a few drawn seconds. The warp of his sharp features was bewildered like he hadn't heard a thing Stiles just babbled at him. Stiles held up the book again.

"Research," he said, "Scott's at work and Lydia's still on vacation, so I thought I’d just go right to the source. You know about any kinda energy boosters or magic plants or anything?"

"Go home, Stiles." Derek told him, but his voice was just as empty as his gaze like he wasn't really in his body.

"I mean it was a shot in the dark," Stiles shrugged, "anyway I didn't come empty-handed." He set the weighty book on the bottom step and swiveled on his heel back out the door. This was painfully uncomfortable, but fuck all if Stiles was going to give up after being dismissed. He didn't know where to start when speaking to a ghost in a house full of them. The plan was to talk until he hit something useful, which, was pretty much always the plan.

He snatched the paper bags from the back seat and palmed the drinks from the front. When he got back into the house he wasn't shocked to see that Derek was gone and trudged up the stairs. He found him in what had been a bedroom or an office. There was no furniture. By the soot stains on his hands and spattering his clothes, Stiles guessed Derek had cleared all the rubble. The back of the room was blown out. There might have been a window there at one point, but now it was just a gaping hole looking out on the pines behind the house.

The narrow room was completely void except for Derek and the crumpled paper in his fist.

"So, I got double meat on yours," Stiles told his back, "because, I mean, Scott orders triple meat so I just figured you'd be slightly more conservative, but still unapologetically carnivorous with your Chipotle. And you don’t like spicy stuff, right? Because it's pretty much just cheese and sour cream, guac, lettuce, you know, boring shit."

Stiles sat down next to where Derek stood, staring out through the gash into the wall. Without waiting for an invitation, he cracked the bowl he'd gotten Derek, speared a fork right in the middle of it and set a few lemon wedges around the edge before unwrapping his burrito.

"Oh," he said around a mouthful, "there are chips and stuff too. Impulse control is pretty much nonexistent as soon as I smell the carnitas. And I got you a tortilla just in case you're one of _those_ people."

He chattered on about nothing for a long while because Stiles was like one of those magnetic bullet trains. His mouth ran with no friction to impede it. Derek didn't stop him, but thinking he was paying any attention would have been naïve. He didn't sit either or spare a glance at the meal set out for him.

Stiles wanted to touch him. But he resisted, shoved more burrito in his mouth because Derek was not exactly a touchy kind of person. It was sad, made Stiles' shoulders feel as heavy as Derek's looked today. The rest of the pack was hyper-tactile. They're wolves, they communicated with smell and touch, but not Derek and the reason why wasn't fucking rocket surgery.

People who put hands on Derek only ever did it to hurt him.

Stiles popped the last bite of folded tortilla into his mouth and asked around the wad in his cheek, "What're you holding?" He had a good idea of what it was and Derek needed to talk about it. Holding on, being sad, bottling up all that grief, the only thing that did was kill you faster.

Derek's eyes dropped, but he was still as ever; a soundless, motionless chasm.

Stiles took a deep breath and then, "Every year on the day my mom died I get Mcdonalds and bring it to her grave for a picnic, tell her about my day, school stuff, Scott. But before that, I couldn't even get near the cemetery. I mean, I was little, but it wasn't like temper tantrums; I'd get really physically sick. I'd puke all over the car and start crying because I felt bad my dad had to clean it up when all he wanted to do was see mom. And there's no one reason I got to the point where I could visit on my own. There's no cure-all. But talking about it is a big part of moving on."

Stiles loosely pulled up his knees and looped both arms around them. He had planned to say his piece and go after a while; let Derek know the door was propped open if he ever decided he wanted to go through. He did not expect a response.

"It's Talia."

The thing in his hand; it was a picture of her. Stiles squinted at it, was able to make out the vague shadows of a face between Derek's fingers. He rolled to his feet and asked, "Can I see it?"

Derek nodded shallowly and handed it over.

The edges were singed and blackened. A tanned, freckled woman who was just as inhumanly gorgeous as Stiles assumed she would be, was seated at a kitchen table sorting through her mail. Stiles's dad had some pictures like that, taken when owning a camera was still a big deal and people took pictures of all the random little things they saw family doing during the day.

"Dude, you look exactly like her," Stiles cocked his head to get a better glimpse, "she's got brown eyes, though."

Derek glanced at him fleetingly, and said to the forest, "They looked like yours."

"Really?" Stiles lost verbal traction for a moment. Derek's sentimentality was not something he'd ever known existed. "What about your dad?"

Derek's voice darkened, "What about him?"

"What was he like?"

Eyes that were every color and no color all at once scraped over him and Derek said, "He doesn’t matter."

Yikes. Stiles fixed him with a concerned pull in his brow he couldn't help and dropped the subject.  He wondered loosely if maybe Hale was Talia's true family name, one she passed on to all of her children. This was certainly the closest glimpse Stiles had ever gotten of Derek's past or the real version of it. Derek would mention Talia briefly on occasion. Usually when remembering something she taught him or used to say. But he had never mentioned his father.

They stood in a comfortable silence for a few moments, watching wind toss the branches. Before Derek muttered, "Mine used to be brown too."

"Your eyes?"

He nodded, faraway look perching back in the place it had been when Stiles had gotten there. Derek didn't look as much like his mom as he used to and now she was gone, eyes and all. Stiles had learned about why wolf eyes turned blue in some reading he'd come across a while back, but without Derek actually admitting to it, there had been no way to tell if the color was hereditary and it was just the wolf-glow that had changed or if it was the other way around. He regretted pointing it out now. Some PTSD support buddy he was.

"Either way you're like a frighteningly manly photocopy of her," Stiles offered, grinning, and bumping his shoulder into Derek's. He stretched and handed the picture back. "I should get going, sourwolf, gotta get Dad's dinner started."

He gathered up his trash and covered Derek's bowl so nothing unsavory might fall in it.

"Stiles," Derek said quietly. When Stiles met his eyes, he was facing away from the hole, arms crossed, more color in his cheeks than before, "You can," he huffed a frustrated breath.

"Hmm?"  Stiles pressed when it seemed he wouldn't speak again.

"I need my sweater back."

"What?"

"Last week you wouldn't stop complaining about being cold until I gave you a sweater and you never gave it back."

"Oh, shit, yeah I remember. I swear I washed it, but, and, hear me out, Scott came over to smell it before I was gonna give it to you and he said the detergent was so strong it made his eyes sting, so I bought some organic, hypoallergenic, scentless detergent that just got delivered. I can run home and do a load and bring it over later. Are you gonna be here or...?"

Derek nodded.

"Okay, cool, I'll see you in a couple hours. See ya, big guy."

His stomach overboiling, Stiles trotted down the stairs a little faster than was probably advisable in a house like this one. The plan here, before the word vomit, had ultimately been to just give the damn thing back, not admit to hours of searching online for special detergent he'd only use once or how he'd field tested it on a load of Scott's clothes first – which, he was just being thorough, ok? Or how he'd slept in it and not taken it off once in three days. And he couldn’t remember how much of that was said out loud; all of it? Couldn't really process any thoughts at all over the embarrassed shower of curses raining down on his higher functions.

Mortified, he slid into his Jeep and pressed his forehead into the steering wheel. _Why can you ever just say what you fucking mean?_

 

***

 

Stiles catches a quick look at himself in the hall mirror before greeting Deaton at the elevator. It has only been a couple of hours, but he looks horrible. Chasing four puppies around the house, elbow deep in their _leavings_ has left him with a pale pallor and frantic hair. All of the puppies, of course, heard the elevator’s slow climb up its shaft and bolted to the door immediately, nearly tripping him in the process.

“Stiles,” Deaton says demurely, carefully pressing passed the wolves. He speaks and moves as if he hasn’t noticed that a single one of them is clamoring for attention as if the fact that they are wolf cubs were a completely normal thing to have happened. And for some reason, probably stress, this infuriates Stiles.

“What do you mean _Stiles_? Please tell me you know what this is!” he barks flapping his arms wildly around at the cubs.

“I’ve only just gotten here,” Deaton tells him, setting his things down on the coffee table. Stiles paces around the room chewing on his thumbnail while the doctor examines puppy-Scott. He shouldn’t be so angry, he needs to calm down. If Deaton’s calm, he should be calm too. On the scale of fucked up supernatural junk that’s happened, this is pretty benign. They’re just puppies, puppies that look to be in good health judging by the affirmative sounds and gentle nods coming from Deaton. He inspects each of them, narrowly avoiding a hard bite from puppy-Erica and then draws his stethoscope down around his neck.

“I can’t say I’ve ever seen this level of enchantment before,” Alan says, rubbing a hand over his scalp.

“Enchantment? Like a witch did this?” Stiles asks coming forward.

“If it was a witch, then it was a very powerful one.”

“How many witches are there in Beacon Hills? You must’ve met some back in the day, right?”

“At the moment there aren’t any. Casters, especially ones old enough to possess this kind of discipline, do not make a habit of crossing into wolf territory. They have a rather complicated history with Shifters.”

“Then this is some kind of painfully ironic prank or something?” Stiles tries and it feels good to have someone here with him that he can think things through with, even if it is just Deaton. Derek would’ve let him pace and rant and problem solve for hours, absorbing what he could until it was out of Stiles’s system. How he managed to say nothing and still be a source of comfort was a bit of a mystery to Stiles and his currently being a mute baby wolf that can’t offer help even if it wanted to only heaps on to the stupid irony pile.

“I doubt anyone would go to this much trouble for a prank,” Deaton offers bleakly.

“We’ve never had a problem with a witch, though,” Stiles insists, “I’ve never even met one. If this is bad blood or something, why now?”

“That’s an excellent question,” Deaton replies, a thin crease forming between his brows, “The Hales have historically held a neutral position with the caster community. But witches are temperamental beings. If one of them has been slighted in some way or perceives that they have been, it might warrant this sort of act, but this isn’t some cheap cantrip. This is very powerful magic; the ability to transfigure a physical being is a craft known only to a few elders of the Midnight Court. I’m most concerned with the permanence of the effect, or the after effects of it should we find a way to reverse it.”

Stiles’s head swims, making him dizzy and he says, “This could be permanent.” He says it more to himself than anything, and hearing it aloud, from his own lips, only makes the ringing in his ears louder.

“We can’t know for certain until we find the witch that performed it,” Deaton says firmly, “They may be the only one able to reverse it. All enchantments, certainly more so those of this caliber, are unique, highly personal things. No other witch would know how to reverse this unless they knew every action taken, every ingredient used, the time of day, the position of the moon and so on, but they may be able to identify the caster’s signature.”

“Then call one,” pipes out of Stiles instantly.

“It’s not that simple, Stiles,” Deaton sighs, “We have to proceed with extreme caution. Most importantly of all, _Derek_ has been afflicted by this curse. He’s the alpha of this territory. If the wrong witch or their familiars finds out that he is weakened, I fear that you will all be in a great deal of danger. And there is the matter of payment. A skilled witch does nothing for free, Stiles, and their payment can range wildly from eyesight to servitude, to childhood memories and those are the least invasive examples.”

Stiles sinks into the couch, rubbing his eyes as he absorbs Deaton’s words.

“Also, I realize this is a sensitive time, but there is the matter of my own payment.”

“What?” Stiles asks, coming out of his own whirling thoughts for a moment. Deaton gives him a patient, close-lipped smile. “We never paid you in past….” By the time he reaches the end of the sentence he realizes what Deaton is politely suggesting and Stiles never bothered to ask, did he? He’d been so naïve as to think Alan gave his help out of the goodness of his heart. Dr. Deaton wasn’t the Hale emissary anymore, not since Talia was killed. Stiles has read enough to know that the moment she stopped breathing Deaton’s contract was void.

“Derek’s been paying you?” Stiles hedges.

Alan nods, “Seeing as you are the only consenting, able member of this pack that gives you full authority over its resources. If you wish to continue engaging my services, I require payment in full and up front.”

“Up front,” scoffs Stiles, “in case I die and there’s no one left to sign your check?”

“Unfortunately, yes.”

“And how much does your help cost?” he asks, failing to conceal the bitterness in his voice. Half of his brain knows how childish he’s being for souring at the expectation that Alan be compensated, but flipping that switch into adulthood, thinking in sterile, emotionless terms, will take more time than he’s got right now. He just needs to find a way through the woods and find it fast. He can agonize over his actions and tone once this is over.

“Luckily, Derek does pay me a retainer in case of emergencies, which drastically deflates my usual rate. It’ll be three thousand dollars to locate a witch suitable to your needs and an additional five thousand if you wish me to stand in as acting emissary in your negotiations with them.”

“ _Eight thousand dollars_?”

Deaton nods. But Stiles hasn’t got a clue how much money Derek Hale actually has or how to get to it, or if Derek would even want him to. This is so far from anything he’s ever thought he would go through; being treated like an estate executor when Derek isn’t actually dead and talking this way, as if he is, as if it’s utterly hopeless that he’ll ever be the way he was again, it’s too big and he’s just too small.

 Deaton collects his things, “I’ll give you some space to make your decision, though I will advise you make it soon. From what I can tell, your friends are wolf cubs in every sense, as close to real wolves as they can be. That means they are susceptible to the same diseases and accelerated aging. They cannot remain this way for long and we do not yet know how long it will take to reverse the enchantment if such a thing is possible.” And with that, without a single word of comfort or reassurance, Alan Deaton sweeps out of the loft.

 

“Derek, dude, you’ve got to come out,” Stiles sighs, sitting on the floor beside the bed. Puppy-Derek doesn’t rumble at him this time, but he doesn’t move either. Stiles groans, an aggravated little noise culminating from the tide that has quickly turned from fear to anger inside of him. Deaton wants money, that’s just how it is and if Derek and the others have any hope of being not-puppies, then Stiles is just going to have to find a way to swipe a stack of Hale cash. He digs through Derek’s bedside table until coming across a little-used smartphone. To his credit, despite his ineptitude with technology or willing ignorance to it, the phone isn’t in bad shape. If the immaculate state of the room wasn’t enough of a hint, Stiles finds that he’s a bit pleased with how well Derek takes care of his things.

That being said, the thing’s been powered down for a week and starts chirping alerts as soon as it’s turned back on. A dozen texts and emails flash at him, unopened. In a rare show of restraint, Stiles ignores them and finds the next number on his mental emergency call list.

“This is certainly a first,” comes a smug answer when the line picks up.

“Oh, my fucking God, thank God you’re not a puppy,” Stiles breathes out, leaning back against the dresser.

“Stiles?” Peter asks with a touch of undeserved incredulity.

Stiles runs down all that’s happened in the last few hours at a breakneck pace and Peter _actually listens._ Like, not a single interruption and knowing how much Peter is in love with the sound of his own stupid voice, it leaves Stiles wondering if they were disconnected.

“Pay Deaton,” Peter tells him once he’s done and catching his breath.

“I don’t have eight grand, dude, pay him how? I’ve looked all over this place and I can’t find a checkbook or Derek’s wallet. Is he just squatting here or something? Like, this is reaching Ron Swanson levels of paranoia.”

“Of course, you can’t,” sighs Peter, though his tone comes off like he’s more annoyed by his nephew’s mistrust than he is with Stiles in general. “The last I knew, he had a safe installed in the floor of his closet. He never told me the combination but he’s a sentimental drip, so try eight-seventeen-eight.”

With the phone pressed to his ear, Stiles glances down at the bed and the angry cub hidden away under it. He remembers standing anxiously in line at Chipotle, tapping his fingers non-stop on the steering wheel as he drove, mind racing and silent all at the same time. The safe is where Peter said it would be; a sizeable dark panel that’s cool to the touch. Wiping sweat off his palms, he turns the dial and after a handful of ticks the door clicks open.

“Did it work?” Peter asks boredly; he’s probably buffing his nails for all of the interest in his voice or lack thereof.

“Yeah.”

“He probably keeps enough petty cash on hand for Deaton in case of emergency.”

“If not I’ll need to get into the Vault,” Stiles mutters, shouldering the phone as he riffles through the safe’s contents.

“Stiles, if you go near that vault I will personally pull your tongue out through your rectum.”

“Whatever,” Stiles huffs and hangs up the phone. He can decide whether calling Peter at all was a wise decision later. Peter’s different than he was but knowing Derek’s weak might encourage old habits. He can worry about that later, besides, the last he knew Peter was in Miami buying Chinos and taking yoga classes five days a week to manage his homicidal wrath. He tucks his phone into his back pocket and pulls out a manila file folder. It’s neatly filled with property records by the look of it. Derek owns quite a bit of land in and around Beacon Hills, including – including this entire building? Does Deaton take payment in the form of acres?

In a side compartment, there’s an envelope splitting with cash, one that’s worn down with use, having been emptied and refilled over and over. Thank fuck. He’s about to close the whole thing up when his eye catches on a stack of photographs. Flipping through them reveals that most are old family pictures, the ones too precious to hide away in a binder shelved below ground. There’s one of a round-faced, wide-eyed baby-Derek and his mother laying on a shabby futon and some of Cora and Laura and people who must have been aunts and uncles or extended packmates. At the bottom of the stack is a picture of Stiles and his heart double-beats.

He can’t say when it was taken, or by who; it could have been during any number of pack meetings over the last few years. In the picture he’s reclined on the sofa downstairs, the light tumbling in from the windows is a diffuse, soapy glow and he is smiling at something. It doesn’t look anything like him in that eerie way photos aren’t able to capture everything. He looks still and content and healthy, not at all the sweaty, nervous mess his always is. When he looks up from the picture, a jet-black wolf cub is standing a couple paces away, staring at him. Puppy-Derek is agitated, eyes flicking from Stiles’s face to his hand and the picture he’s holding.

“Uhm, sorry,” Stiles says quickly, folding everything back inside the safe and latching it shut. He expects Derek to growl at him for intruding, but he doesn’t, he just stares and somewhere in the recesses of his doggy brain he probably means it to be a threatening stare, but in this shape, it’s anything but. He’s barely a foot tall and covered in staticky, downy fuzz with one ear that sticks straight up and one that’s floppy. Stiles chuckles, “You are so fucking cute right now, like too cute to take seriously.”

Puppy-Derek sits, his stare unbroken.

“Can you understand me? Because if you can, I _really_ need your help, big guy.” But Derek makes no indication he knows what’s going on. Deaton said they are all as close to real cubs as they can be; whatever humanity they have left might not be enough to process language. Puppy-Scott was happy to see Stiles, so he acted like a happy puppy. Puppy-Derek recognizes this room as his territory so he came out to observe when Stiles started going through his things. And while that’s good to know – sort of – it means dick to Stiles in this particular situation.

He sighs, “Ok, I have to go drop this money off, and like, get some dog food? Just stay here and don’t die.”

Leaving them all alone feels so wrong, but he has to do this one thing and then he’s on full-time doggie dad duty, promise. Hopefully, there’s enough skrill in his bank account for five dog collars, leashes and twenty packs of puppy pads.

 

He and Deaton don’t exchange any more words when Stiles shells out the payment. He’s too worried what he might say that could throw off the working balance Derek has maintained all of this time. Walking out of the clinic all he can think is that he and Derek are going to have a serious conversation about soloing on important shit like this. Derek’s such a martyr, so un-reliant on his pack that he’s inadvertently set Stiles, or whoever could have ended up in this situation, up for failure. And Stiles gets where he’s coming from, he does; Derek thinks everything falls on him to provide and maybe the pack reinforced that standard by never offering their own shoulders to bare some of the weight. But how could they have known, how could Stiles have known, if Derek refused to talk to them about it? Why did they even bother with pack meetings if they never established any sort of contingencies for this type of thing? None of them could have foreseen something like this, but after all they had been through they certainly could have, should have, planned for a scenario in which most of them were incapacitated.

And now Stiles is listless, making the best decisions he can with no experience to back it up and it’s burning holes in his stomach.

 

He doesn’t hear from Alan for days and is starting to lose hope; his mind turning tighter and tighter circles of suspicion. Did he just take the money and run? It’s not absurd to consider, seeing as he never exactly offered to fill the emissary role when Derek became alpha. There was nothing holding him here and clearly there wasn’t much left of the loyalty he maintained with Talia. If there ever was any? Derek never told them how Deaton came to serve his family; for all Stiles knows it could have been born out of some wolfy indentured servitude.

As the days flit by, he does what he can to wrangle and potty train his friends. Wiping streaks of shit from Scott’s ass and paws is a little too surreal, but fuck, all of it is surreal and trudging through it without thinking is the best he can manage. He slumps into a chair in his dad’s kitchen, utterly drained. John’s puttering around him, making coffee and Stiles is too zonked to really pay him any mind. It’s not until his dad is sitting across from him, rapping his knuckles on the wood that Stiles realizes he’s been talking.

“What?” Stiles blinks a few times.

“I know this isn’t about school,” John says, leaning back. And Stiles dumbly repeats himself. “I’ve seen the homework that ‘college’ assigns you and an eighth grader could do it.” His father’s disapproval of Stiles’s choice to take community college courses online rather than apply to a traditional brick-and-mortar university has been a sore spot since he applied, one that shows no signs of healing any time soon. John thinks his potential is wasted in Beacon Hills, but even though he’ll never admit to it, it’s not the town he thinks in wasting Stiles, it’s the pack, it’s Derek Hale. Maybe he’s right. “So, what’s going on? I barely seen you over the last couple weeks.”

Stiles plays with the idea of blaming it on their schedules. His job waiting tables at Mazza’s and school have kept him pretty occupied even before the whole Curse of Five Puppies. He decides against lying when it occurs to him that he should be taking his own advice. Derek’s unwillingness to communicate put him in this position in the first place.

He looks his father in the eye as earnestly as he can and swallows down the shame he’s feeling over asking for help, “The pack’s in trouble. I… I should have told you as soon as it happened.”

John nods pensively, “No shit, kiddo.” Of course, he already knew it was something along those lines. All the kids Stiles went to high school with assumed their parents were totally oblivious to their respective “secret” lives. And that’s complete bull. Parents already went through the whole teen angst of no money, no agency, hormonal typhoon of youth; they already know all the tricks and they know when they’re being lied to even if they let it slide.

He tells his father everything he knows and it slides out of him, slow and somber.

“Ok,” his dad says when he’s finished, “You should have come to me immediately,” and Stiles winces because he knows the ‘I’m-mega-pissed-but-going-to-handle-this-situation’ voice all too well. “You already paid Alan, so there’s not much we can do about that other than hope he fulfills his end of the bargain. Always get things in writing, Stiles, _always_. With no record of this transaction, there’s nothing we can hold against him. Even if this is all,” John twirls his fingers, “supernatural, there is language we could have crafted around it, services rendered, boilerplate stuff, that would have held Alan accountable and been legally binding in the eyes of a judge.”

Glumly, Stiles nods.

“I’m going to head over to the clinic at lunch to sort this out. I suggest you get over to Derek’s apartment right now, pack up the pups and bring them here. If they’re already in trouble, then we need to be keeping a close eye on them. Once you’re done, you call Melissa and tell her what’s going on. She’ll probably want to come over, that’s fine. I want to make it painfully clear, Stiles, that we do not make any more arrangements with Alan or whoever he finds to undo this unless the three of us are present, understand?”

“Yeah,” and as horrible as it is to see how far he’s fallen in his father’s eyes, Stiles is billowy with relief. Ever since Scott got turned, the pile of lies of omission and half-truths that have accumulated between Stiles and his father is staggering. All of it has come into the hard light of day one way or another, but it’s still happening; Stiles’s knee-jerk reaction is to juggle it all and… and maybe it’s unfair of him to be so frustrated with Derek. How different are they really when it comes down to serving their pack? Their motivations might not align, but the results are constantly sprinting parallel alongside one another.

“We’ve talked about this so many times I don’t think I have the energy anymore Stiles,” John says, standing from the table, “I never thought I could be, but you’re old enough now to bear the consequences of your actions and I’m at my limit. This is the last time I jump in late in the game like this. Either there’s total transparency between us, or you’re on your own kiddo. Maybe it’s my fault that this pattern still exists, I’ve enabled you too long, but at some point, I have to let you pay for your own decisions.

“And honestly, as disappointed as I am with you, I’m furious with Derek. Melissa and I spoke with him so many times I lost count about taking responsibility for you kids.”

“You… never told me about that,” Stiles says, his brow crushing together.

“You really think we’d let you and Scott run around saving the town without keeping tabs on your – alpha.” John forces out the word because it’s one that’s been explained to him, but not one he’s ever truly understood. “Derek swore to me, to my face, that he’d protect you first, no matter what. Jesus, even Melissa agreed that he should throw himself between you and danger before her own son.”

“Because I’m human,” comes out of Stiles. He had turned down Peter’s offer to turn him, and there were hundreds of reasons why that was the right choice, but there is never not a time when the distinction between him, his frailty, and that of the rest of pack isn’t made abundantly clear to him, regardless of whether it’s said aloud. Something like pity crosses John’s face.

“That’s only part of it,” his father tells him, “I’ve known since you were little that you’d take a bullet for anyone you cared about and Melly, too. So, I made Derek promise me he’d keep you safe. And what’s he done? He’s gone and pissed off some witch and left everything up to you, he’s jeopardized your safety and Scott’s and the rest of the kids and left you completely rudderless. I’m a broken record at this point, but this is why I wanted you to get out of this town. There’s more out there, better, brighter things for you than this. Derek Hale’s problems, and we both know that this is not the last of them, are not _your_ problems. I let your crush on him slide while you were in high school because it was harmless, but now it isn’t.”

“ _What_?” Stiles snapped, cutting a glare up at his father.

“Oh please, Stiles, give me a little credit. I’m not blind. I’ve seen how you are around him. And if I have to be the bad guy, I will. Derek Hale has extreme post-traumatic stress disorder, he’s closed off, he’s inexperienced and his behavior over the last few years has been too close to erratic for my peace of mind. None of that means he’s a bad person, I think he’s given a hell of an effort to regain some stability in his life. But he’s made terrible choices along the way. Isaac and Erica and Boyd wouldn’t be in this position at all if he hadn’t scrambled to assemble a pack to defend his territory.”

“He helped them!” cries Stiles, “He cured Erica’s epilepsy, he got Isaac away from his dad!”

Calmly, John leans down with both hands planted flat on the table, “That right there is exactly what I’m talking about. No one is disputing that there are silver linings in each of their cases, but it does _not_ change the fact that they were minors; yes, he chose to turn people he perceived to be in need, but he chose to turn anyone at all out of a selfishness. They may not be disposable to him now but at the time? He knew there might be casualties when the alphas showed up and even though he disclosed to Erica, Boyd and Isaac that was a possibility, it does not change the fact that they _were not old enough_ to consent to what he was offering.

“You’re so quick to defend him, and that’s admirable, but look at your motivations. Kid, you have been so gone on him that you don’t stop to question his narrow thinking. You aren’t you yet, you haven’t had enough time to figure any of that out and a big part of that is how much of your attention is being diverted to the pack. Derek Hale is a _lot_ of person, more than you know how to handle. That’s why I’m so angry with him. He might be trying his best, but it’s not good enough and no matter how many times I explicitly told him not to, he’s been stringing you along for three years.”

His dad’s words hit harder than a closed fist. And Stiles has nothing. Nothing but a bottomless bowl where his guts should be.

 

***

 

He was delirious with adrenaline. It had been raining earlier that night and the woods still smelled dark and loamy, the bark of every tree glistening with dew. The nighttime sounds had resumed, crickets and frogs and squeaking bats, but he heard none of it. His heart was hammering, but not in the way he associated with panic attacks. He was out of breath because he had spent it all running, his heart throbbed because he was racked with fear. But now there was nothing to be afraid of. Still-hot blood fell in a viscous curtain from the omega’s neck. It – it had been wild, deranged, there was nothing they could do.

When Chris Argent spoke about rabid wolves Stiles had never entertained the idea that his words were mined from anywhere other than a long-standing legacy of bias rhetoric. But… this wolf, it was gone to the animal, there was no intelligence in its eyes. Had Scott and Isaac not identified its smell, he would have thought it was a real wolf; a freak anomaly driven into northern California by an unpredictable wrinkle of fate. It had come at him from the brush, out of nowhere, jaw snapping, and roaring and _hungry_ and, and he was knocked down.

When nothing tore into his flesh, he had opened his eyes and standing in the scattered light of the flashlight he had dropped was Derek, crouched, claws running with scarlet.

“F-fuck,” wheezed Stiles, his voice like a scream when he was sure he was barely able to whisper. The word tumbled out of him a few more times. Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. He’d never seen, seen… death? Or he had, but this was so personal, so close. It was the monster from his closet having finally revealed itself to be more tangible, more terrifying than he could he dreamt up on his own. And it was dead now, spasming, hemorrhaging; the discrete scent of shit and copper permeating the air.

And then Derek was pulling him to his feet, crowding in front of him, shielding him from the corpse.

“It – it jumped at, at me, I couldn’t-,” he blathered, trying to get another look at it even though he couldn’t bear the sight and Derek held down his arms, kept him from seeing it again.

“I know,” he said, his voice strained, but even.

“It’s, so dark, I didn’t see it-,”

“Stiles-,”

“I – my flashlight, but it was, it’s so dark-,”

Derek cupped his face with both hands, anchoring Stiles’s wandering, hysterical gaze.

“It’s not your fault,” Derek told him, and his hand was slick with the omega’s blood. It smeared over Stiles’s cheek, cooling his skin and stinking of death and Derek’s eyes wouldn’t let him look away even though he was crying and he couldn’t stand the thought of Derek seeing him cry. “I’m sorry,” Derek said mechanically, face hardened to marble, a muscle in his cheek bouncing, “It’s my fault.”

“There – there’s a person in there,” Stiles sobbed, and his mind was crumbling and he needed to scream. They weren’t supposed to kill it, they said they wouldn’t, they were just going to drive it off, away from the town, but now it was dead anyway because Stiles was too weak to defend himself. It wasn’t Derek’s fault, it was his, he was the reason Derek had to do what he did, it was his fault someone was dead.

“They were gone,” Derek said firmly, “It happens sometimes. I told you it can happen.”

“We, we didn’t even try to, to help-,”

A black expression pulled Derek’s face even tighter, “There’s nothing you can do when someone’s that far gone.”

What if that had been Scott? He didn’t have the stomach to say it. If not for Derek, Scott could have gone feral, could have turned and never turned back, could have hurt Melissa. And they had been so against trusting Derek in the beginning, so suspicious, so cocksure that they could handle this alone without knowing what might happen without guidance. His mind screamed it over and over; it could have been Scott, it could have been Scott. The dead wolf, bleeding into the leaf litter could have had his best friend’s face because they were so naïve, had been until this moment. This world was more than Stiles knew how to handle, it plunged so deep he could not even conceive of the right questions to ask in order to understand it, to grasp its abstractions.

And Derek had been alone in it. He was still alone; Stiles hadn’t given a single thought to how little he was aware of. He was the brightest among his peers, was put into classes for students more brilliant than those in the standard gifted programs and all of that reassurance of being the smartest person in the room made for gaping holes in his perception. The omega with its throat slashed out… it could have been Scott, but it could and should have been Derek. If Stiles had everything stripped away from him, his father, his friends, his _life_ , he would have given in to the power of his wolf, let it live as he watched from a distance, because what point would there be?

He gave no more thoughts to his actions when he kissed Derek. Derek badly needed to be kissed, to be valued, to be loved. He could have given up, he had every right to, but he refused for whatever reason to disappear and Stiles did not know what it was to be grateful for something until that moment. Kissing Derek was the only way he could say all of these things in a way he might understand. Derek didn’t kiss him back, not at first, not until Stiles was pulling away did any tension return to his broad hands. He held Stiles in place with both hands, and – and Stiles had never been kissed like that before; like someone was breathing sparkling heat and life into hollow bones.

But it didn’t last. Derek’s lips brushed his, filled him to the brim with more affection than he had known he could receive from another person, and then released him, arms falling back to his sides.

He sputtered, “Derek-,”

But Derek shook his head, brow woven over darkened eyes, and perhaps something more insightful, braided with thought, had meant to find a way out of him, but all he said was, “No.”

And there was nothing to discuss, no way to misinterpret his meaning. For weeks, maybe months afterward Stiles spun in on himself wondering why. Finally, it snapped into place, though he didn’t recall when, that he wasn’t owed an explanation. He had crossed a line Derek had not wanted to, no matter the extenuating circumstances.

His answer to all of it was ‘no’.

 

 

***

 

He’s blocked out everything that happened that night. Nothing useful would ever come from toiling over it, nothing but self-loathing anyway. But John’s words tendered the sensation of hope that there was _something_ between them, even if it wasn’t ideal, even if they were both works in progress. Stiles could have lived with ‘no’.

He doesn’t know how to live with ‘maybe’.

 

Shepherding five puppies into his Jeep is hell on this ragged and unjust earth. With the exception of the black cub, all of the puppies are a yipping, stumbling yarn ball of frustration. They tangle their leashes and wrestle and run circles around Stiles, painfully jerking his arms as he tries to reel them in.

“Erica, if you don’t let go of Isaac’s ear I’m gonna duct tape you to the roof!” Stiles shouts, squatting to separate them, but it’s a futile effort. Stiles knows fuck all about dogs except not to use force because it’s cruel and pointless. Puppies don’t understand leash yanking or butt smacking, all that means to them is that the person doing it is an asshole not to be trusted. But how in the name of Kaballah Monster is he supposed to get them to _stop being a bag of dicks_?!

None of them has long enough legs to hop into the Jeep so instead, they all adorably clamber around it, climbing over each other to try hauling themselves up. Stiles resorts to lifting them in gently and settling them on the huge wooly doggie travel bed one at a time. Puppy-Isaac settles instantly, curling into a little cinnamon roll, face wedged into the bed’s lining. Scott and Erica trample all over him in their excitement to be in a new place with new exotic smells and even in cub-form Issac’s melancholic enough not to pay them much mind. Boyd goes in last and immediately tries to jump back out forcing Stiles to wrench himself backward in order to catch him before he smashes his head on the concrete. Grumbling, Stiles finally gets the door closed and lifts puppy-Derek into the passenger seat up front with him.

It’s a little bit due to preferential treatment – he’s feeling a lot of confusing feelings right now and he’s exhausted and sore – but that treatment also comes from the fact that Derek is hands-down the best behaved of all of them; or whatever mystical bullcrap reason. If this curse was aimed at him, which seems likely, maybe that’s part of it. The others are pretty mindless, but not Derek. After watching them over the last week, the difference in their awareness has thoroughly crystalized for Stiles. Derek might not have human levels of mental acuity, but he definitely understands more of what’s happened to them.

He never barks, not even at meal time, he does his business on the pads or outside without needing to be shown and has no interest in the toys Stiles has tried to engage him with. He just sits on the couch, or under it if the others are being too rowdy, and watches. So, Stiles is careful what he says around him. It’s too tempting to try talking to him while he’s like this, too easy to want to convince himself that Derek won’t remember. Now that Derek can’t talk to him, his mind keeps spinning in circles on how much he should have said and all the chances he passed up to say them.

“Pops wants to keep you at home with us,” Stiles says, revving the engine. Derek looks up at him, ears perked at the words, but there’s nothing in the way of comprehension in his face. “It’s gonna be ok, Der. I’m gonna fix this.”

 

Things are still strained between Stiles and his dad, but the puppies’ presence in the house helps to ease the tension. John’s a sucker for a cute pooch and five of them at once loosens him up as soon as he’s through the door that night. Within an hour, he and Stiles around rolling around on the carpet with them, John blowing raspberries into Isaac’s belly.

For a while, Stiles forgets that they were ever human and strays into a rare place of calm while they play, but one look at Derek perched in the club chair by the fireplace dispels his forgetfulness.

 

It’s worse when Melissa gets there. She takes a look at the brood eating kibble in the kitchen, sees the chestnut-brown cub that’s her son, and walks out of the house. John goes after her. Stiles doesn’t hear what they’re saying on the porch, but it doesn’t take long for the faint sound of her sobs to reach him. She runs home later that night to pack a duffle bag. His dad helps her settle into the guest room and they eat a silent dinner of Salisbury steak and greens that’s tasteless paste in their mouths.

 

That night Derek wanders into his room while Stiles is reading, to wired and restless for sleep, and curls up on the foot of his bed. Stiles isn’t sure if he should say something. If Derek were in his human body, speaking now would be pointless. Stiles lives for words and Derek wears them like lashes. As a compromise, Stiles starts reading aloud until Derek’s toes and ears start to twitch, his breathing deep and even.

 

The witch Deaton produces isn’t exactly a witch. He’s a familiar acting on her behalf. Alan gives the three of them a quick rundown of the man’s credentials, but the only noise filling Stiles’s ears is the buzzing of flies. Just before the familiar flounces into the house, Stiles vomits in the kitchen sink.

The familiar introduces himself as Christian Lisiewicz, and if Stiles were in a joking mood he could have better appreciated the irony. He wasn’t sure what to expect; a shadowy humanoid with a voice like falling water? A tabby cat fluent in four languages?

He hadn’t had enough time or mental stamina to do any research on casters or their pets, or whatever Christian was supposed to be, and he’s regretting it now. Being unprepared for the first time in his life and at the worst possible moment is doing fucking nothing for his anxiety. Christian is wholly unremarkable. He’s well dressed in narrow cigarette pants and polished brogues, his mess of curly platinum hair, hair so blond it’s nearly white, neatly styled. He takes a seat in the chair Derek has grown fond of over the last couple of days and hitches an ankle over his knee as if this were the home he had grown up in. It’s jarring to see him more comfortable in this house than Stiles has ever felt; his presence filling the space and bending it into something unique to himself as if he built the place with his own sweat and timber.

Deaton settles into the couch at his left, moon-like face placid as always.

“Can I get you anything to drink?” John asks politely, Melissa hovering at his elbow.

“Mmmm, water with sugar,” Christian answers. Stiles and his father exchange looks, but don’t dare comment. Stiles goes to fetch it and after a lightning round of panic, he realizes he’s got no clue how much sugar is too much. Deaton had said witches are temperamental and the last thing they need is for this guy to storm out throwing hexes left and right because the Stilinskis are shitty hosts. In a fit of brilliance, Stiles fills one of his mom’s old, ornate ramekins with sugar and a teaspoon, a pitcher with mineral water and places both with a clean glass on a tray. He sets the whole thing down on the coffee table and receives a pleased smile for his effort.

“Down to business?” Christian muses, spooning pile after pile of white power into his glass.

“Alan told us there would be a payment required for services,” John says formally, his cop voice toned down to one that is less aggressive, but fully professional.

Christian shrugs, “I can charge you if you like, but, as I told Doctor Deaton, my interest is purely academic.” Deaton had managed to leave that tidbit out and Stiles glares at him. How the fuck are they meant to interpret that without opening themselves up to a whole new battery of questions?

“Academic?” his father asks, unaffected.

Christian takes his time gulping down the whole glass, a long, slender finger raised until he’s finished. “Transfiguration is a lost art. My mistress is very interested in the practical application of it. Learning how it was done, or who the caster is, is more than enough payment for looking into the matter.”

“Who is your mistress?” Stiles asks instantly and by the look he gets from his father, it’s in his better interest not to speak again until Christian is far gone from this house.

“That is not a part of this agreement,” Christian tells him lazily, almost purring.

“Our caster has graciously provided her resources on the condition that she remain anonymous,” Deaton adds helpfully.

“Old magic like this can be,” Christian rolls his wrist a few times, searching for the word, “enviable.” He then fishes a soft pack of cigarettes from his waistcoat and asks, “May I smoke?”

To Stiles’s surprise, his father tells him it’s fine and even pulls an old ashtray from the baseboard. His parents used to smoke casually, or so Stiles loosely remembers, but quit well before he was in elementary school. The memory of it is more the remembrance of the smell, the spicy, demanding scent that clung to all of the furniture even years after. Christian puts the slim cigarette to his lips and snaps his fingers. A vestige of flame jumps on to the end of it and Stiles’s mouth goes dry.

Eyeing his stricken reaction to, well, to the blatant usage of _magic_ , Christian says, “I’ll teach it to you for the memory of your first kiss. It’s a delightful trick at parties.”

“I think it’s better we stick to the matter at hand,” Melissa tells them, pulling her cardigan tighter around herself.

“Very well,” Christian says with mild disinterest, “I’ll need to examine one of the cubs.”

“Go get Derek,” John instructs and Stiles wants to fight him on this but doing it in front of a witch’s familiar seems unwise. They have no way of knowing if Christian’s or his mistress’s motivations are what he says they are and presenting him with anything but a unified front is the worst thing they can do. And it makes sense, Stiles can admit to that no matter how much he doesn’t want to. Derek is the object of the curse, maybe even the epicenter of it, and he’s so headstrong he would have wanted it this way. Stiles doesn’t have to urge Derek out of his room. They regard each other and then Derek hops off the bed and trots downstairs. Eerily he comes to sit before Christian, he eyes more focused on the man than a normal animal’s should be.

“Well that’s interesting,” Christian says, pulling in a drag. He leans forward and bobs his head side-to-side to get a better look at Derek. “I always carry a mollifying charm,” Christian explains, never taking his eyes off of the cub, “It’s weak, only good against lesser curses and enchantment; bush league cantrips hedge witches like to throw around to impress mortals, that sort of thing. You’re not as lost as you were, are you?” he asks of Derek.

“Can you fix him with it?” John edges, asking what all of them are wondering.

“God no,” Christian chuckles, “I assume it’s peeling back a couple layers of enchantment. Or something. It’s not an exact science.” He tucks the cigarette into the corner of his mouth and pulls out a device made of an array of lenses and knobs and begins to peer down at Derek through them. “I’ve never seen anything like this,” he says, though, his tone reflects intrigue with no hint of empathy over what this curse has done to the pack. “I don’t know what you’ve gotten yourself into, but there’s more than one enchantment mixing around in there.”

Stiles can’t help the sudden and hungry, “What do you mean?” that snaps out of him.

“I’m seeing a lot of layers. But one of these isn’t part of them. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s common Shifter magic. They aren’t capable of many spells, and, honestly, I wouldn’t really say calling them spells is an appropriate label. Charms maybe? I’ve heard of this before, it’s usually made by an alpha and their second in order to suppress an alpha’s heat.”

Stiles goes hot-faced and his father and Melissa don’t seem to be faring much better.

“It’s not what you may think,” clarifies Alan, “Heat in terms of werewolves does not necessarily mean a period of willingness to breed. Alpha wolves in a stable pack environment will begin to give off certain pheromones to attract a partner, whether or not that means childbearing is at the discretion of the alpha. It’s merely a signal that they are now able to provide for a mate. As Christian said, there are some scenarios in which an alpha may choose to suppress their heat if they believe there may be complications within their pack or the territory is under threat, et cetra. There are innumerable reasons why they may decide not to go in heat and choose to postpone what their body believes is an acceptable time to transition.”

Keenly, Christian offers, “Unrequited love, for instance.” He allows this to settle for an incredibly uncomfortable beat before dismissing it with a shrug, “Unfortunately, if we are to strip off this curse, we may also end up dispelling his self-imposed charm. Most banishings are indiscriminate. The Fear Eater, for example, will devour not only a hex of fear but a person’s ability to feel fear altogether. Occupational hazard.”

He continues turning lens and flicking levers until doing away with the device with a dissatisfied lilt to his mouth. He runs Derek through a multitude of other seemingly absurd and meaningless tests. He snips and burns a tuft of fur, sprinkles rust colored dust on Derek’s forehead, places a glass grasshopper figurine before him, makes him hold a silver beech branch in his mouth. None of it looks to be producing results and Stiles has chewed his cuticles down to nothing. Finally, Christian draws a small obsidian knife from his bag and lunges at Derek, blade arching straight down the center of his skull. Stiles isn’t fast enough to stop it, he’s halfway across the living room, heart hammering, brain cleaved with terror, when white-hot light bursts into being, deflecting the knife and sending Christian sputtering backwards.

Blinking rapidly, Stiles gets to Derek and snatches him up against his chest, “ _OhmyGod, what the fuck?_!” he roars.

Alan helps Christian to sit up and the man is wide eyed and pale faced, his air of coolth blown out and leaving a tall, skinny nobody shaking on the floor. Tendrils of wispy smoke rise from his hand, his fingers are blistered and red and the knife is gone, either dissolved or thrown somewhere into the room.

“Had to,” his voice tremors and he uses his good hand to slick back some untidy curls that fell free in the commotion, “I had to try.”

Melissa goes into nurse-mode without asking any questions. As she dresses his burnt palm, Christian chain-smokes silently, lighting each one off the last until his shaking stops. Stiles forgets, or stops caring, that Derek’s still Derek, maybe even more so in Christian’s presence and refuses to put him down. Derek doesn’t fight him. His little heart is racing against Stiles and Stiles whispers to him to calm him down and peppers him with light kisses.

“ _What just happened_?” John demands fiercely, standing over where his son is huddled on the couch.

“I don’t know what,” Christian swallows hard, “what you people are, or what you do in your spare time, but you are _fucked._ ” It takes a couple minutes and another cigarette before he can say more. “The power being drained just to keep this curse active…,” he’s staring at Derek where he’s nestled in a wreath of Stiles’s arms, “Sometimes the fastest way to find the root of a curse is to put the bearer in danger.”

Deaton nods, his fingers steepled under his chin, “That’s quite ingenious. The purpose of a curse is to punish its victim. That victim cannot be punished if they’re dead. One as strong as this would certainly spring to defend its host.”

Christian, too, nods, “Yes. When it activated, I caught a glimpse of –,” he shakes his head to clear it, “Alan, I saw the Hale.”

“Someone better start speaking fucking English _right now_!” Stiles barks.

“Stiles,” his father says, trying to calm him, but he’s so far beyond calm the thought of it being encouraged only fuels his anger.

Deaton rubs his face. “The Hale is a well of energy or chi or magic, however, you might wish to define it. It’s raw life at the spiritual core of the earth from which even humans draw strength and health. Three witches tapped the Hale thousands of years ago and they are the only ones to have ever done so. Many refer to them as one, the Triple Goddess, the Witch in the Woods.”

John scoffs, “You aren’t serious.”

“If Christian has seen the Hale as the source of this curse, then I’m afraid I am deadly serious.”

“I _don’t_ _understand_?” grinds out Stiles.

“He thinks Derek’s been cursed by Baba Jaga,” John says, crossing his arms.

 

***

 

Deaton walks Stiles into the den where they can speak alone and once again Stiles is a little baffled about his relation to the Hales now that Talia is gone. He charges Derek for help but sticks closely to a kind of doomsday protocol when Derek’s in trouble. He gently guides the door closed and turns to Stiles.

“As the only able member of the Hale pack there is some information I need to share with you,” he says in a hurried whisper and it’s the most out of sorts Stiles has ever seen him.

“What?” Stiles deadpans, “Derek’s related to the most famous witch in eastern Europe?”

“No, Stiles, but his family has a history with her,” and suddenly this whole thing doesn’t seem so ridiculous. Deaton is grave, his expression not changing except for his eyes and they go as cold and hard as granite. “I don’t know why She has chosen now to seek revenge, but Talia and the alphas before her, were each made to prepare for this eventuality. I would advise you keep this information as close to yourself as possible: many hundreds of years ago an item was stolen from Baba Jaga’s private treasure house by an early ancestor of the Hales. She hid the item away to spite the Witch for cursing her mate, a young wolf who was considered a princess among shifters. As an added insult, she then proclaimed their pack the Hale Pack, taking the name of the Witch’s very source of power.

“It’s unknown now why Baba Jaga was never able to find what was stolen, we don’t even know what the item was, but the Hales have been vigilant should She ever return and it seems that now she has.”

“Ok, so, this is easy,” Stiles says, hands coming up emphatically, “we just have to figure out what she wants and give it to her. Easy-squeezy. Obviously, it’s in the Vault, right? There’s a ton of old creepy shit down there; whatever they took must be in a box somewhere.”

“Maybe so, but Stiles,” Alan says, “wouldn’t that be the first place the Witch would look? Why hasn’t She? I’m afraid this may be some sort of challenge.”

“ _To see how long Derek can be a puppy before he_ loses _it_?” Stiles snaps. He doesn’t want to be so furious with Alan, but there’s nothing else in the room to take his anger out on and despite his efforts to remain centered, or something like it, spurts of fire continually shoot out from between his teeth. Derek, still cradled under one arm, winces at his tone. Gingerly, he licks small laps against Stiles’s fingers and it’s enough to give him pause.

Patiently, Deaton says, “I thought this curse was aimed at Derek, but now I’m starting to think it might be targeting you.”

“What would be the point?!” Stiles implores, indicating his pedestrian self.

“As Christian said, there are layers to every work of spellcraft. She’s punishing Derek, preserving him so that he must remain helpless. A thoughtful curse, if She knows anything about him. If the Hales are not the object of the curse,” he says, pensively pacing the room, “then there is nothing they can do to break her enchantment.”

“I have to do it?” Stiles hazards.

“It’s very possible. The woman that stole from Baba Jaga was a Hale ancestor, yes, but she wasn’t a shifter. She was like you, Stiles. Many witches require symmetry in their works because their works are subject to equivalent exchange. That is why transfiguration is such a challenging discipline known only to a few. It requires an untold amount spark to power it and many years of preparation for the completion of a single spell. It is possible that this curse had begun forming long before you were born.”

Stiles nearly asks why it was cast now rather than when he was first assimilated into the pack, but before the question is completely formed in his mind, the answer is there, eclipsing it from his mind’s eye.  

 

His last memory of Derek is of the night the pack went out for pizza at Mazza’s. It was chilly for early fall, the scent of burning leaves already beginning to float on the air, the parking lot slick from a gone-by rain storm and shockingly bright as it reflected the restaurant’s neon signs. All of them sat in a booth and while Stiles no longer recalled what they talked about, he did remember the feeling of it. The warm, dry air blowing out from the radiant heater under the table, the scuffed checker board floor and wine-stain walls; how the house lights were dimmed down and their booth was lit by the blue and red stripes of light outside. Sitting in the twilight of that dining room, surrounded by his family, he caught Derek’s eye across the table and his chest was flooded with a slow rolling heat, like maple sap pouring out from its tap.

It sunk down the length of his body, made him ache in a satisfying, sore-muscle sort of way. He was glowing from the inside out and thought it nothing more than the strengthening of the pack bond. That memory wandered through his mind at night while he lay awake waiting for sleep and maybe more than once it caused his hands to wander as well.

And then Derek was absent for a time, holding to the fringes of their pack even though he was always at its center. He was a specter, there and not; able to speak, but never saying a word. Until Stiles put himself in his path, forced his way in, showed up at the Vault when he shouldn’t have, knowing Derek would be there.

 

It probably doesn’t matter where Stiles goes to invoke the Witch. In the stories his grandmother used to tell him, she watches from the mirrors and in a particularly terrifying iteration, she can see through any reflective surface. He drives out to the Vault. If anything, it’ll give him home field advantage, however much that’s worth against the most powerful trio of witches/composite, multi-dimensional being known to mortals. He takes Derek with him. He doesn’t have a good reason why, there might be several, but his brain’s too focused and amped up on nerves and meds to sort them out.

Puppy-Derek sits obediently by the central cluster of old filing cabinets as Stiles clears as much space as he can in the middle of the floor. His back is killing by the time he’s got enough room to sketch out a simple summoning diagram on the cement in chalk. This might be overkill, but Deaton suggested a formal invitation might endear him to the Witch of the Wood and that couldn’t hurt. He mutters some strings of Polish while he draws, his knuckles and wrists going scarlet with effort. When he’s done priming the circle, he shoves a huge gilt mirror framed by tarnished filigree to stand in front of the diagram at its western most point.

Panting he throws a look over his shoulder at Derek, “I can feel you judging me.”

Puppy-Derek also starts panting and Stiles is _sure_ the man is flat out mocking him now. “Whatever man, we can’t all be a living David. And frankly, you’re not being super helpful.”

Derek _yarp, yarps_ at him, pink tongue flopping out of his mouth. Without Christian around, he’s reverted back to mostly puppy with just a hint of sourwolf. It’s a little worrying to hear him bark after so much silence, even if it’s the puppy equivalent of a joke. Stiles works faster. Derek needs to be out of this body and back in his own before he disappears. His spent so long keeping himself alive and healthy when he had every right to regress, that Stiles can’t fail him now, can’t let him vanish for no reason.

“Don’t come looking for me after this,” Stiles says, wiping his brow, “I’ll be too busy shame-eating myself to death.” Because whatever is about to go down… well, Stiles can only hope Derek doesn’t remember any of it.

Their familiar-friend had said magic isn’t an exact science so Stiles decides to go _Fullmetal Alchemist_ on this bitch. He kneels before the circle, claps his hands and slaps them on the floor. And it looks painfully cool up until the motion is complete and nothing happens. No blue lightening, no giant rock hand rising from the cement. Fucking. Lame.

He tries a couple times to be sure and maybe throws a _Kamehameha_ in there for good measure.

“C’mon dude!” Stiles yells at the empty mirror, and in his best Christopher Walken a la Liz Lemon impression, shouts, “ _Give – it up – I figured out – ya game_!”

And for some ungodly reason, a woman appears in the mirror glass. Every time Stiles blinks, her form changes: she first shows herself to him as a young woman, like, the hottest lady on this bitch of an earth and the weird thing is – or one of the many, many weird things about this – is that he can’t actually say why he finds her so attractive. As soon as she’s gone, he’s forgotten everything about her other than the fact that she’s beautiful. The next woman he sees standing in her place is middle aged, her clothes a bit rattier, her hair a bit greasier and the last form she takes is of the Crone. A horrible, toothless old bat; her skin leathery, wrinkled and sunken by the passage of a thousand years. She flits from form to form so dizzyingly, Stiles has to force his eyes open to keep from blinking.

The middle-witch is the version his is met with for his efforts.

_What game do we play, little one?_

“Man, do I know a chain-smoking weirdo that would cream his pants to meet you,” Stiles blurts out, brain scrubbed of his purpose here.

Baba Jaga smiles and his eyes aren’t accustomed to being split open for more than a couple of seconds at a time and he blinks by accident and the Crone stands in the mirror, gnarled, thickly veined hands crossed over her bent walking stick. He plays with the idea of blinking again right away, but that would probably be a really, really bad idea. He’s read way too many old folktales from a variety of cultures about dumbass mortals being punished for lusting over a _whatever_ , you name it, and being punished for their shallowness in a multitude of increasingly grotesque and imaginative ways.

“Um,” Stiles clears his throat for some reason, “You… all? Ya’ll, uh, ya’lls guys cursed my alpha to close the loop on some crazy old curse from like, the Dark Ages, because you were bound by the laws of exchange. So, your payment for the spell, your ten-fold payment or whatever, was being cursed to wait for me and Derek to be born or… reborn?” Yeah, Stiles is just _so_ uncomfortable with what his interpretation of this mess implies; uncomfortable in the way thinking too hard about the existential void makes him uncomfortable. He glances over his shoulder at puppy-Derek who is still panting obliviously and periodically sniffing around the table his lead is tied to. “And I owe payment too? Because the other me – past me? – stole from you to break the first curse?” Honestly, it sounds like something his dumbass would do. By saving his girlfriend and never paying Baba Jaga back, it’s probably his fault this curse followed him through the centuries.

Through the _centuries_. Because he’s been alive more than once? He was sort of fine with the whole not knowing what happens at the End. It had to be something, right? If the universe is infinite than there are infinite probabilities of what happens after death; it’s just a numbers game at that rate and the probability of _nothing_ happening is just one highly improbable outcome. It’s a little disappointing, actually, knowing that humans actually guessed one of the right answers. And he can fret over his meaningless place in the cosmos later. Or get as drunk as humanly possible and forget this whole shit-show of a fuck.

The Crone’s grin sends a shiver up his spine that he diverts most of his will power to suppress. Also, probably ok to blink now. He does and is rewarded with the young-witch. She’s holding a rabbit under one arm and draped in nothing but sheer, raw silk.

“You don’t even want the treasure back anymore, do you?” She has been waiting so long, whatever is was, it must be pointless now.

 _Clever little one._ She says without moving her mouth. _Tell us what the treasure is_.

“Well,” Stiles says, bringing his legs around to sit crisscross, “At first I thought it was the feather, honestly, it’s a firebird feather, right? But that was never really here, was it?”

The young-witch gives him a coy, close-lipped grin. Derek had given him a strange look that day in the arcane spellcraft aisle, strange because Stiles had been reaching for nothing. Just Stiles being Stiles.

“My incarnation?” he guesses and she nods, encouragingly, and then morphs into the middle-witch when he can’t take the burning in his eyes anymore. “She, uh,” he knuckles his eye for good measure, “she stole from you because you turned her girlfriend into a wolf. She stole something to turn her lady back into a human.”

_And that was?_

He hadn’t thought much about it, but when he does, it seems obvious. “I don’t know how she did it, but she stole love from you, didn’t she? Spells are so personal that she would have needed your love, not her’s, to break it. That’s why you waited to cast the last enchantment… I had to be in love first.”

_In your past life, you stole from a one we held most dear, our youngest daughter._

“See, I don’t think that’s true, Babs,” Stiles says, leaning back on one arm, trying to appear calmer than his racing heart will allow him to feel. Damp spots are already soaking the thin jersey knit under his arms. The middle-witch’s fondness ebbs at his words, her mouth turning downward and dour. “Hear me out. And, this is going to sound so… just, cringe-y,” he breathes, “you can’t – you can’t take love from a person. They have to give it. I think your daughter felt bad for past-me, dude, I mean, you’re rocking some crazy Old Testament style fury, no one’s arguing that, but why did you curse the Wolf Princess in the first place? I get Derek’s terse as fuck, but what did he _do_?”

Should he not incur the wrath of most powerful caster _ever_ , this wolf princess thing is never going to get old. 

_The princess was fairest of all and arrogant. When offered a place in our court and in our bed, she refused us._

See, unfun, lusty punishments.

Stiles balks, “Are you fucking _serious_?! You’re like a thousand years old! Why do I need to explain consent to you?! She was in a relationship. With me,” it’s really fucking weird to say it out loud but seeing as he remembers nothing about his past life, he might as well be talking about a pair of strangers and that lessens the volley of internal screams a bit, “Apparently. And even if she wasn’t, fuck off, man, she said _no_. That’s not arrogance. Doesn’t that speak more highly of her anyway? She wanted to be with her boo rather than run off with a stranger for what? Power? What the fuck kind of moral compass do you have?”

The Crone came to him then, _Her punishment was decided by the Midnight Court. We had no choice in the matter. And as you have come to find, your past-self was able to break their half of the curse. It is now your turn to free us all from it._

Stiles nods, “You could have at least let me say good-bye to him first.”

_Your opportunities to make your true self known to him were numerous and you squandered them all. This is no problem of ours._

 There is no version of this in which Stiles chooses to hoard his feelings and leave Derek to live out the rest of his shortened life as a wolf. It’s never been a question, not even when he finally came to terms with what he would have to give up. But that didn’t mean it didn’t hurt. It hurt maybe more than he knew he could ever be hurt. And once it was gone, whatever vessel it was that held his love, the hurting would go away. Imagining himself sitting in this place, a version of him that couldn’t remember what the big deal had been or why his cheeks were wet, put a stone in his throat that refused to dislodge. Stiles wipes his eyes with his sleeve.

“Yeah, ok,” he croaks, he can’t bear to look back at Derek, “Just, take it, it’s yours. Just do it.”

Puppy-Derek must have sensed his sudden distress and starts to whine at his back. Baba Jaga steps out from the mirror, her feet bare and form, which ever it is now, are blurred by tears. Stiles stares at the floor, refusing to sob freely, because crying won’t do him any good now. He just needs this over with. Derek’s whine climbs in pitch, until he’s frantically barking, the table leg jumping against the cement as he pulls at his lead.

In spite of his efforts, tears skate down his face and he holds his hand over his mouth to keep the rest of it down. Derek’s screaming by the time the Witch reaches him, that terrible animal screaming the racks his chest, stings deep in his soul. She bends down and pulls away Stiles’s hand so that she can kiss him. He holds his breath, body clenched tight, frightened that it will be painful, more painful than it already is. How can this be so unfair? He has nothing to remember his past-self or Derek’s by, why does he owe a thing to her, why is it his burden to pay back what some other version of himself took? And all because some circle of witches hundreds of years ago decided to arbitrarily punish his wolf for making her own choice. There is no word for this sort of pain. No matter what the Witch takes from him, Stiles swears to himself as she pulls away from his lips that he won’t rest until every pillar of the Court is burnt to ashes.

 

 

“ _Stiles!”_

He’s still huddled on the floor, muscles cramping all over his body from the tension in his limbs. Stiles chokes out a breath like he’s been underwater for hours. He doesn’t have time to register much before Derek’s in front of him, shaking his shoulders and _very_ naked. He’s saying something, but the ringing in Stiles’s ears is too loud. He must have ripped off his collar as soon as he became humanoid again. It’s laying in shreds under the table.

Derek’s large palms grasp the sides of his face, cupping his jaw and Stiles is forced to look him in the eye.

“What did you _do_?” Derek demands, red-faced with panic.

“I – uh, I dunno,” Stiles tells him woozily, blinking fast.

“ _What did she take_?” Huh. So Derek remembers some stuff then, maybe not the details, but he seems to have gotten the general gist. Stiles flounders in his own thought stream for a moment, his brain patting itself down, looking for missing chunks. Being in the presence of the Witch is still plastered to his mind’s walls, but in the way dreams stay with a person; more emotional than factual. She took something from him, he can feel it, something is gone as if he had been poured out, but not emptied. Each time he touches that part of his spirit it’s… it’s fuller, growing back in to fill its flask.

A hysterical laugh bubbles out of him and Derek looks petrified, his greenish-bluish-brownish eyes wide with worry.

“Dude,” he chuckles, “I – shit, that was _wild_.”

“What did she take, Stiles?” Derek asks again, stripped down to his nerves.

“She took love,” laughs Stiles, “man, I really _did not_ think that one through.”

“… What.” Derek does nothing about the skepticism in his voice and Stiles is grateful not to be the only one that thinks this whole thing is just the most cliché mystical crap he’s ever heard of.

“Yeah,” and then Stiles kisses him. Derek’s stiff, unyielding at first or maybe just stunned into motionlessness. When he decides to kiss back, it’s timid, his mouth moving even though he couldn’t be more uncertain of himself and Stiles breaks away, because, shit, he owes Derek a little more than ‘wow that was weird, huh?’. He’s a little fucked up about this and his brain’s firing on exhausted fumes, but that’s no excuse for screwing up their first kiss.

“Oh my god, I’m sorry,” Stiles blurts, “that was, that was dumb. I’m, sorry, you sort of just got here. Uh, firstly, I’m, I love you. And… uh, the Witch, I had to return the love I took from her in a past life to get you back and I kinda misinterpreted the shit out of what she meant, like, man, I thought I’d be _not_ in love with you anymore, but that’s definitely not what happened. Like I thought it was a finite thing, but, like no, it’s like a well or a wellspring or something. Like she took out a bucket and – sorry, doesn’t matter, because, clearly, I am totally still all about you. And I should have told you like forever ago. I get it’s been weird, we met when I was a kid and all this other shit, but I should have just said it as soon as I knew –,”

Stiles is derailed abruptly not by anything Derek says, but by a freight-train of a scent that’s worked up into the air between them. It’s strong and musky and a little sparkly, like citrus oil shooting out of an orange peel. He’s instantly lightheaded, his mouth paper-dry.

Eyes half-lidded he asks, “What the _fuck_ is that?”

Derek’s stony-faced, but glowing red from his chest to his cheeks to the tops of his ears.

“Wait,” Stiles jabbers, before Derek can answer him, not that he was going to knowing him, “You came down here with Scott that day. Scott’s your second. Why didn’t you tell me? Christ, you smell like…,” he sucks in another lung full, “ _an orchard in Elysium_.”

“ _I didn’t know_ ,” Derek grinds out. He didn’t know Stiles cared about him in that way. Right. That’s right. And he hadn’t broached the topic either but given their past and the warnings John Stilinski had given him to stay away, Stiles can’t begrudge him his not knowing what to say or do. In true Derek Hale fashion, he had suffered silently and done nothing. He could have moved on, he could have left Beacon Hills, but he had stayed with his pack and suppressed his own body when it was ready to call out for what it wanted most.

“I’m… so sorry, Derek,” Stiles says, around a hard swallow, “I didn’t know either, not really. I was being a baby. I should have been at your door the second I knew how I felt, I should have been there for you instead of feeling bad for myself. I should have just talked to you for fucksake.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Derek tells him, dropping his gaze.

“You’re all that matters to me, big guy.”

Derek’s eyes are back on his then, holding, testing as if there’s a trick here he hasn’t figured out yet. And then he nods slowly, silently agreeing. Derek leans into him, his lips are cold from the dankness of this old warehouse, but his tongue is an ember. He pushes Stiles backward, down to an awkwardly placed elbow in his haste. And Stiles can taste the residue of the desperate place his urgency is coursing from, hell, Stiles isn’t exactly a pillar of composure. He can’t get enough of Derek under his hands, between his legs, against his mouth. He’s trembling so hard Derek’s being shaken in time with him and the _smell._ It’s only getting stronger, assaulting his higher functions, intensifying them, stirring him into a frenzy.

“Uh, shit, Derek,” Stiles pants into his mouth, “this, we gotta – like slow it, uh –,”

“Yeah,” grunts Derek, shiver going down his spine and reverberating through Stiles’s finger tips.

“Maybe, like, we uh, chill for a sec?” As hot as the idea of throwing Derek over a table and fucking the shit out of him sounds, Stiles is sort of sure that his decision-making skills are being disastrously overwritten by the _amazing_ smell soaking Derek’s skin. And, yeah, they, he shakes his head to clear it, they’ve got some ground to cover before either of them goes there. _Being responsible fucking, just sucks so, so hard._

“Yeah,” Derek says again, pushing himself to sit up and pulling Stiles up with him.

“That pheromone thing is _not_ a joke,” Stiles heaves, rubbing his temple. He tries to discretely adjust himself through his jeans, but touching any part of his anatomy right now is ill-advised, apparently. His skin is dewy with sweat and achy, like his whole body is a swollen erogenous zone. It makes concentrating a _challenge_. Derek’s never shown any bashfulness over nudity and it’s an annoying trait the rest of the pack has picked up, especially when Erica’s trying to get a rise out of Stiles or flat out embarrass the shit out of him. He’s not trying to cover himself now, and Stiles is about to pop a blood vessel he’s so aggressively _not_ looking at the pulsing muscle resting on Derek’s thigh.

“I can’t stop it,” Derek forces out tightly.

“I like it,” Stiles tells him through a small smile, “just wanna be… careful, y’know?”

Derek’s mouth tugs at the corners until his teeth are just peeking out, “Yeah.”

“Maybe we go on… on a date, talk about it?”

His wolf nods.

They’ll talk, maybe honestly for the first time. No more bottling it up, cowering away, hiding from each other. And they’ll never stop talking, even when they are ready to say nothing, their bodies will say it for them.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Man, yes, here it is, my prompt thing for Sterek Glompfest. I wrote this in like a day. That's hOW PUMPED I AM. 
> 
> All aboard the feelings train. 
> 
> This fic was probably an indulgence my already overloaded plate didn't need, but I WANTED IT AND NOW IT'S HERE. Which means Last Rest, the one I'm supposed to be finishing is still, tragically, unfinished. Plus I'm moving. Again. So, it'll be at least another month sadly. 
> 
> Please enjoy these puppies and this sappy romantic crudd and lemme know if you thought it was swell. Also, let me know if it's shit. I will sit in the Bad Room to atone. 
> 
> btw, your butt looks hot in those jeans. everyone's just jealous.


End file.
